We like our decade benchmarks. In 1961, JFK had his end-of-the-decade moonshot. Now after a stretch of corporate shoulder shrugging and lip service, CEO after CEO is announcing bold sustainability initiatives with 2030 as the North Star. Al Gore, the sustainability siren, stayed true to his message at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January. Also, at Davos was Greta Thunberg a voice of the future consumer, demanding action on climate change to her global business audience. Perhaps Thunberg, with the weight of that future consumer behind …
NRF 2020: It’s a New Decade and We’ve Finally Put the Retail Apocalypse to Bed
In early January, the global retail tribe marched past the Hudson Yards' towers, the Vessel, The Shed and construction cranes to cloister themselves in the Javits Center for the 2020 iteration of the annual retail mecca, the NRF Big Show. It appears that 20/20 proved too tempting an analogy for many copywriters to resist. The session titles implied a crystal-clear vision of the future of retail as the new decade unfolds. In actuality, the show reviewed and previewed the state of retail, displayed a mind-numbing array of available retail-tech …
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Reflections of a Trade War Correspondent
In the words of New York Times Columnist Paul Krugman, "At this point I've lost count of how many times markets have rallied in the belief that Trump was winding down his trade war, only to face announcements that a much-anticipated deal wasn't happening or that tariffs were being slapped on a new set of products or countries." While this could be the genesis of a new drinking game, the current tariff tumult, which it appears has reached a truce, is hardly entertaining for procurement officers who are trying to strategize around the shifting …
Stop Planning for Gen Z: They Have Arrived and This Is Where to Find Them
It begins now. The elders of the generation labeled "Z" will enter the active consumer class in 2020. This generation, born between 1996 and 2010 is estimated by the NRF to have $44 billion in buying power either through influencing family purchases or shopping on their own, and that number will increase to $82 billion by 2026. They will be 40 percent of the population by 2020. They live on their phones. They feel Facebook is for an older audience. Instagram, gaming, Snapchat, Twitch, and TikTok are where they are engaged. Are you ready? We …
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Next up for Amazon…Fashion
On a busy Saturday, the radio was tuned to a cultural trivia game show called Ask Me Another. The segment I heard was called "Closing Time," a game that revolved around "bygone retail chains." At the end of the segment, the host said, "Next year's game will be called "What's a Store?" The current state of retail is now well-trodden subject material, but the punch-line-ification of the situation was new to me. Amazon Has Stretched the Definition of Omnichannel As we have watched the shifts in commerce progress from concerning to tectonic, …
Is Plus Size Fashion Dead?
Alexandra Waldman, Co-Founder and Creative Director of Universal Standard wasted no time in defending "Plus Size Fashion Has No Future," the title of her SXSW session. She noted that if one evaluates the female apparel shopper in the United States, "A medium is now a size 18-20. If designers can get a medium right, then everything else should fall into line." The company's goal is nothing less than a sizing mind-shift. "We want to take size out of the equation." Universal Standard wants to be a brand for women, not just plus size women. They …
How Artificial Intelligence is Changing Retail, Culture, and Everything
Shoptalk and South by Southwest ran consecutively this year. In spending time at both, certain correlations stood out. The implementation of artificial intelligence in retail was examined in detail at Shoptalk, whereas its role in our overall economic activity and lives was an overarching theme in Austin at the SXSW Interactive Festival. The Term Artificial Intelligence is Becoming a Catch-All Before we go any further, it might be useful to set a baseline for AI. A simple definition of artificial intelligence according to futurist, professor, …
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The Circular Fashion Future
As Marie Kondo's https://konmari.com tidying up mantra streams into our bedrooms via Netflix, we stand, touching the clothes in our closets waiting for that spark of joy. The valuable, yet dispiriting items stuffing our wardrobes slump on their hangers, ready for the purge. But wait! The options for exploiting their value have expanded. The practice of playing our apparel forward is doing more than decluttering, it is feeding a thriving, proliferating retail channel, and spurring innovation. Thrift stores are nothing new. According to the …